Educational Studies is an interdisciplinary program that examines education as a cultural, sociopolitical, and humanizing practice. Drawing on the history, sociology, and philosophy of education, the field investigates how people learn, how educational institutions and communities are structured, and how policies, power structures, and systems of knowledge influence educational experiences across contexts, locally and globally.
Our program supports intellectually curious students, practicing PK-12 educators, and higher education administrators who seek to engage with deeper questions of educational purpose, equity, and transformation. Through interdisciplinary coursework and critical inquiry, students examine education from multiple perspectives while developing flexible programs of study aligned with their academic and professional goals.
Grounded in close faculty mentorship and collaborative intellectual communities, Educational Studies supports students as they develop the capacity for scholarly inquiry, nonprofit and policy work, and leadership in educational settings. Students learn to connect theory, research, and practice while developing the analytical tools, methodological perspectives, ethical commitments, and intellectual independence needed to critically engage with educational questions, contribute to knowledge in the field, and participate in—and reshape—educational futures.
Totals Hours Required — 33
Required Courses
Two more courses from the following:
Electives (12-18 hours)
Selected from education, research, anthropology, history, history of science, literature, foreign language, philosophy, sociology, human relations, English, and psychology.
Candidates for the EDS M.Ed. may complete the degree by successful completion of either a Comprehensive Examination or a Thesis, upon consultation with their assigned advisor.
Thesis
Students must take 2-5 hours out of their 12-18 hours electives requirement as:
Educational Studies is the perfect space for students, practitioners, and community members interested in in-depth and transformative conversations on schools/schooling, contemporary issues affecting our communities, as well the history of intellectual thought. Our students are engaging in conversations about education’s problems and possibilities and our own roles in society. Similarly, some Educational Studies students are experienced and concerned professional educators who think both critically and imaginatively not just about methods and techniques, but also especially about the purposes, meanings, and values of their work. These educators are interested in understanding their own positionalities and in engaging in transformative work within their schools. While other Educational Studies are interested in careers in non-profit organizations or government agencies where knowledge supported by course work grounded in the history, sociology, and philosophy of education will best prepare them. In any of these cases, Educational Studies may be well suited to develop your own insights and capacities for intellectual and leadership in education and your local community. Faculty in OU’s Educational Studies program are also uniquely grounded in interdisciplinary fields such as Latina/o/x Studies, African American/Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Gender Studies. Our students benefit a great deal from engaging in scholarship and conversations within these traditions.
As the oldest field in the modern education profession, scholars in the Educational Studies tradition analyze, evaluate, and construct educational narratives, artifacts, archives, concepts, values, purposes, theories, policies, pedagogies, and curricula as well as experimental institutions of learning. The contemporary fields educational inquiry claims its sources and standards of evidence, conceptual frameworks, analytic techniques, evaluative tools, rules of critical engagement, and pedagogical protocols directly from the arts, humanities, cultural studies, and social sciences—rather than from the behavioral sciences that now frame other fields’ methods of educational research and standards of educational expertise. Such interpretive, critical, and normative inquiries on education may concern any age group or the whole human lifespan, any or all subjects, many aims, varied cultural contexts and institutional settings, and even different historical periods.
Most Educational Studies graduate students work professionally as teachers, professors, community educators, and educational administrators—and engage in scholarly self-examination of such work—while pursuing the M.Ed. A monthly colloquium brings Educational Studies graduate students and faculty together informally for discussion of challenging issues and readings as a professional community of learning and inquiry led by students or invited speakers. Graduate students in Educational Studies practice statewide stewardship of the field and participate in professional development activities. All are encouraged also to become professionally active as scholars in the American Educational Studies Association http://www.educationalstudies.org/, as well as in other relevant groups, such as the History of Education Society https://www.historyofeducation.org/, International Standing Conference on the History of Education (ISCHE) https://www.ische.org/, Philosophy of Education Society http://philosophyofeducation.org/, Association for Moral Education http://www.amenetwork.org/, Society of Philosophy & History of Education http://sopheconference.com/, International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry http://www.icqi.org/, National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in Higher Education http://www.ncore.ou.edu/, and Gender and Education Association http://www.genderandeducation.com/.
